The novel is based on the true case of Edith Carew, who was convicted of the murder of her husband in 1897, and paroled in 1910. The book is a powerful work of imagination in which L E Usher creates a vivid portrait of Edith via diaries that create a provocative and unsettling interior monologue. The novel draws on a huge range of the competing facets of Victorian intellectual, mental and emotional life. Edith outrages her contemporaries, she transgresses in numerous ways, yet remains very much part of her time. The book is deeply researched and even more deeply felt - it is an eloquent evocation of a world that we think we know but which is still wonderfully strange.
This is the first novel in a trilogy the author plans about Victorian women murderers.
